X-Message-Number: 4507
From: 
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 1995 19:17:08 -0400
Subject: #4503, #4501

About Mike Darwin's #4503:

1. Mike says that blocks of [brain] tissue from the - 90'C studies have in
fact been cooled to -196'C and look just as good ultrastructurally. That
sounds very important indeed, and ups the ante on separating wheat from chaff
(if any) in the BPI/Alcor procedures.

2. Mike intimates, however, that the further-cooled tissue blocks did not
yield definitive information regarding cracking at the lower temperatures. He
then offers to send us a dog in dry ice for cool-down to LN2 and rewarming,
autopsy, and reperfusion. This presumably would allow a determination as to
whether the Cryonics Institute's lack of cracking was associated only with
cool/warm rate or whether other features of the CI procedure contributed. 

However, cooling down from dry ice to liquid nitrogen and reverse, by the
methods we used with our sheep heads, is so cheap and easy that it doesn't
seem sensible to ship dogs here for that purpose--unless, perhaps, space is
at a premium at BPI.  Also, we do not have the equipment or personnel to do
the type of autopsy that is wanted. 

Nevertheless, if Mike really thinks this would be useful, we are willing to
do it, if we can obtain the  help of local people (veterinarians?) to do the
evaluations. Since this would be a joint investment, we would also have to
spell out an agreement with Mike in advance as to just what would be done. We
don't want anyone to be disappointed or feel misled.

3. Mike's statement that dog brains are biologically closer to human in some
important respects than [other] primate brains is astonishing. I'm not
disputing his sources, which I haven't studied--it's just surprising.

4. I'm puzzled by his statement that "dogs and people...both have remarkably
well protected heads..." followed by statements that when "when humans
stopped swinging from branches and walked upright they took their heads out
of the line of fire..." and some other things that don't seem to hang
together. But it isn't very important.
                                          -------------
About Dave Pizer's #4501:

Congratulations on the new research, Alcor and new commercial firm. I wish we
could raise $40,000 more for research as easily as Alcor did! (Well, maybe it
wasn't easy. Alcor has always earned its luck.)

Which reminds me that recently, when I mentioned some people who had given
substantial amounts for cryonics  research or cryonics generally, I omitted
the names of Paul Segall, Hal Sternberg, Harry Waitz et al at BioTime. The
reason for the omissions was that I didn't know how much of their work was
funded by their own individual, private contributions and was directed to
cryonics research as distinct from commercial research directed toward
clinical medicine. But maybe that's just a quibble: the above-named do seem
to have made significant contributions, judging by brief reports, and we hope
these will be spelled out in more detail in coming months.

Robert Ettinger
Cryonics Institute
Immortalist Society


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